RUTHFULLY YOURS

Where the seats of power are located matters. Given the populist revolt in the United States and Europe against the so-called global elite, it is time to refigure the geography of governmental and transnational power.

Take the United Nations. Much of the international body’s perceived negatives derive from being in the world’s richest and most visible city, New York. But what if U.N. elites did not have easy access to instant television exposure, tony Manhattan digs, and who’s-who networking?

Most of the world is non-Western. Many Western elites are apologetic over past sins of imperialism and colonialism.

So why not move the United Nations to Haiti, Libya, or Uganda? The transference would do wonders for any underdeveloped country, financially, culturally, or psychologically. U.N. officials without easy access to Westernized media and the high life might instead have more time to concentrate on global problems such as hunger, disease, and violence — and be personally enmeshed in the dangers they address.

Given the controversy over President Trump’s supposed disparagement of such countries as “sh**holes,” having an underdeveloped nation host the United Nations could refute such stereotyping. Relocating the U.N. to a capital such as Port-au-Prince, Tripoli, or Kampala would prove that such places are unduly underappreciated and surprisingly wonderful cities from which to conduct international governance.

Liberals treasure the United Nations. Conservatives don’t trust its often anti-democratic and anti-American tenor. So why not split the difference by staying in the United Nations but, after 66 years of a New York headquarters, finally allowing another country a chance at hosting the U.N.?

Two years ago, as then-secretary of State John Kerry was boasting in Davos about Obama’s deal with Iran, he acknowledged that some of the $150 billion given to the mullahs in Tehran “will end up in the hands of the IRGC or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that every component of that can be prevented.” He was right. We don’t know how much money went to fund Iran’s global terrorist activities. And we know even less about the billions in untraceable cash that was supposedly delivered to the mullahs or the recipients of that cash. How about investigating that? There should be ample evidence to prove Kerry and his boss President Obama have willfully engaged in terrorist financing and money laundering. That is unless the pertinent emails and documents related to the payments to Iran had been lost or destroyed.

After the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was implemented on January 16, 2016, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wished to lift all sanctions on Iran, kept complaining that “On paper the United States allows foreign banks to deal with Iran, but in practice they create Iranophobia so no one does business with Iran.” As much as the Obama administration wanted to comply, it needed congressional support to do that. Thus, the Obama administration decided to circumvent U.S. anti-money laundering laws to help Iran’s economy.

Between March, 2012 and January, 2016, when the U.S. lifted the sanctions, Iranian banks had no access to the Belgium-based SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) system. During that time, according to a European oil trader, “Nobody could pay the Iranians via normal lines, not even in euros.” Yet, Iran has received billions of dollars in sanctions relief as incentives to attend negotiations with the United States and others in Geneva. In August, 2012, following a major earthquake in Iran, the Obama administration issued a 45-day general license allowing “registered NGOs to send up to $300,000 to for humanitarian relief and reconstruction activities. And what assurances were there to ensure the money got to the right hands? At that time, Treasury’s spokesman John Sullivan declared, “The license specifically forbids any dealings with entities on the OFAC SDN list such as the IRGC. There is also a mandated report to the Treasury and State Departments, so we can make sure the money does not end up in the wrong hands,” he said. However, he was not asked, and he did not give any information on how the cash was transferred to Iran.

“The amount of pain that Pakistan has inflicted upon the United States in the last 12 years is unprecedented.” — Amrullah Saleh, Afghanistan’s former spy chief.

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency continues to sponsor, equip, and train several terrorist organizations that directly target American troops in Afghanistan, as well as regional allies of the United States, such as India. The U.S. could direct the Department of State to place Pakistan on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

It is long past time for the U.S. to choose what type of relationship it wants.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent denunciation of Pakistan’s “lies and deceit” is long overdue. Pakistani Foreign Minister Khawajah Asif’s retort — “We do not have any alliance” with the U.S. — appears to administer the last rites to a relationship long battered by mistrust. Are there, however, sufficient U.S. interests served by maintaining military cooperation with Pakistan, despite the contentious relationship?

Pakistan’s two-faced role in joining the U.S.-led war on terror, while at the same time giving sanctuary and assistance to terrorist groups, was apparent even before the 9/11 attack on America and continues to this day. President Trump’s decision to withhold military aid may cause Pakistani intelligence agencies to be even less cooperative than they were in the past in assisting U.S. forces deployed to Afghanistan. Moreover, Pakistan’s commercial, economic, and investment interests appear now more closely aligned with China.

It is also in America’s interest to end its own double game of attempting to be allied with both India and Pakistan, countries that are mortal enemies; it would be wise to choose India over Pakistan. As the world’s most populous democracy, India shares U.S. liberal democratic values. Its power in Asia is exceeded only by that of China, America’s principal competitor in the Pacific.

The recent liberation by Pakistani troops of an American family — kidnapped five years ago in Afghanistan by Pakistan-based terrorists — should not be seen as a decision to cooperate more fully with the U.S.-led war on Islamic terrorism. U.S. Navy SEALs were ready to liberate the hostages in the event that Pakistan refused to do so. Reports suggest that U.S. intelligence passed to Pakistan the exact location of the hostages, making it difficult for the Pakistanis not to act. Consequently, Pakistan, as an alleged ally of the U.S., had little choice but to assist.

Like many conservative Iran watchers, I was disappointed with President Trump’s decision last week to extend the controversial July 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran (the JCPOA) by waiving sanctions and giving Congress and European states a final chance to “fix” this agreement in 120 days. This decision was especially disappointing given the recent Iranian protests and that the president issued a similar ultimatum in October 2016.

However, there appear to be some undisclosed reasons for this decision that give me hope the president will kill this terrible agreement in the near future.

A Deeply Flawed and Dangerous Agreement

Critics of the JCPOA were hoping that President Trump would reimpose U.S. sanctions — which would essentially kill the Iran deal — because they believe he was exactly right when he said during the 2016 presidential campaign that the JCPOA is the worst deal ever negotiated.

To get this “legacy” nuclear agreement with Iran for President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and other Obama-administration officials made any concession necessary to Tehran. This included allowing Iran to continue enriching uranium with over 5,000 centrifuges and to develop advanced centrifuges; to construct a plutonium-producing heavy-water reactor in Iran; to wipe clean a long list of unanswered questions about nuclear-weapons-related activity; and to agree to a deal with extremely weak verification provisions. There are credible reports of Iranian cheating on the agreement, including several accounts from German intelligence agencies.

It gets worse. The JCPOA lifted terrorism-related sanctions from Iranians and Iranian entities. Iran’s missile program — which is a nuclear-weapons-delivery system — was excluded from the deal because of a last-minute demand by Iran. Under a side deal, the United States secretly paid Iran $400 million in ransom to swap five innocent Americans imprisoned by Iran for the release by the U.S. of seven Iranian criminals and the removal of 14 other Iranians from an INTERPOL wanted list. According to a bombshell December 18, 2017, Politico story, “The Secret Backstory of How Obama Let Hezbollah off the Hook,” the Obama administration also blocked an investigation of drug trafficking by Hezbollah — Iran’s terrorist proxy — to secure the nuclear deal.

North Korea’s apparently rapid progress last year in both its nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs raises entirely legitimate concerns about U.S. intelligence capabilities. The New York Times recently reported that, as the Obama administration ended, intelligence-community analysts estimated that Pyongyang was over four years away from mastering the complex science and technology necessary to deliver thermonuclear weapons on targets within the continental United States.

Then, seemingly overnight, North Korea was igniting thermonuclear weapons and testing missiles that could hit the lower 48. The Times calls this an intelligence failure, certainly a serious matter. But the real reason was actually much worse.

Evidence in the Times report indicates that President Obama’s team dangerously politicized intelligence gathering and analysis, as senior officials strove to support their preconceived notions of the North’s true progress.

Throughout his presidency, Obama pursued a North Korea policy called “strategic patience,” which was in fact a synonym for doing nothing. As long as intelligence agencies assessed that Pyongyang’s threat was remote, conveniently fitting Obama’s predilection to do nothing, he could contend there was no basis for more robust measures against the North’s nuclear program.

Obama-era intelligence also conveniently painted a very similar picture about Iran, as Obama desperately sought a nuclear agreement later characterized as an achievement comparable to Obamacare in his first term. As with North Korea, if Iran’s program were not increasingly threatening, there was no danger, supposedly, from lengthy negotiations and an imperfect final agreement.

In both cases, however, the truth was much more malign, as North Korea is now demonstrating graphically. During the presidential transition, Obama blithely advised President-elect Trump that Pyongyang would be his most serious foreign challenge. How convenient that reality “changed” for the worst just after Obama departed the White House. Indeed, this “coincidence” is simply further evidence of how deeply his administration had politicized intelligence collection and analysis.